DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF TWITTER HANDLES FOR SENATE ELECTIONS IN PAKISTAN

Abstract

Social media has become a latest source of political communication, through which politicians address the electorate directly with the public. Twitter is one of the most popular social media tools in recent years. The discourse of politicians on Twitter requires attention towards linguistic strategies to uncover the figurative language. For this purpose, political parties (PPP, PMLN, & PTI) are chosen to explore the figurative language in their tweets through the Van Dijk model of CDA. The researchers have analyzed the tweets of Politicians, to find the way they used figurative language to build their agenda regarding Senate elections 2021. The study of the tweets revealed that the politicians commonly make use of figurative language in the form of metaphors, modalities, and lexical choices. Each figure of speech has its significance in making and describing the narratives of political parties.